Messenger

He was a messenger and a shape shifter. Environment absorbed him like a sponge or conversely he dissolved in it like granules of sugar.

He traveled through all life and knew what it felt like to be rocks, animals, trees, flowers, clouds and water.

It was difficult to pinpoint where he was. It was difficult to see him. He was everywhere and nowhere. This is why he was able to carry the message far and wide.

Surprise, surprise, one day, he appeared in all his natural glory. Maple branches bursting with leaves of bright yellow, orange and red colours stood for his hair. Sometimes his hair flowed down his shoulders. At other times it sprang boldly to the skies. But at the time he appeared in front of her, his hair of flaming maple leaves was a solemn wreath. And from it, birds' songs soared.

She was unimpressed. She didn't believe in messengers. She told him that she did not want to talk to him.

From her experience, she knew that messengers had the power to change the message by casting the shadow of their personal doubt over it. They were able to erase from the message the part which was intended to nurture the community. They could not discern that her word was coloured with the passion and unbridled optimism for the well-being of the environment. The colours were bright and this particular nuance represented a large portion of her message.

Knowing that the messengers usually could not see the light of her word, she decided to spread her message the best way she herself could.

But he did not take no for an answer. His eyes shone at her like silver flickers of the sleepy lamp posts in the dark rainy mornings. He asked her questions. He wanted to know why she did not want to talk to him. He just could not disappear into the ground now even if he wanted to. He knew that it was the wind who brought her to the lake, the wind who was his best friend. He wanted her to trust him just the way she trusted the wind.

“Aren't you here because the wind felt to you like an invitation to a dream world” he asked, “because it felt like a mellow touch on your cheeks on this chilly evening, and like a peaceful whisper of rustling leaves in your ears?”

Amused, she reminisced of the wind's strumming the lake into a composite melody of ripples, waves and splashes so that through the seashells inside her ears its water rang bells of a river. As she mused about the wind, the joy inside her heart buoyed on her breath, and she saw sparkles come out of her nostrils and mouth. Rambunctious whirls readily lifted the glitter in the air and then dropped it playfully on the waives' bubbly crests.

While she was looking at the lake, its water poured into her eyes. “My eyes are like two lakes," she pondered. One can be drained so that the king's gold can be mined. The other can be used for the mine waste dumping.”

“Didn't you give in to the wind? Didn't you let yourself be carried on the wind's currents?” he startled her again, and as she turned toward the source of this persistent questioning, the water splashed back into the lake bed.

She did not answer his questions. Yet it was vital to her that he asked them. His stance gave her a pause. And the birds' wings' flutter in the wreath on his head made the moment all the more stunning.

He was fixed in place, waiting.

As they stood in silence, she could feel the colour of his intention. It matched hers. Their shared devotion to the same cause filled the space between them and they remained locked in the meditative silence for some time.

She, finally, spoke the word.

He ran with it.

In no time, the community was in commotion and alarms were tearing the air.

...

The king's decision to build the gold mine by destruction of the lake and its ecosystem was held off temporarily. During that time the heavy mountain fog sank low and settled over the lake, and people in the community could cut terror with their butter knives and spread it on their morning toasts – it was so thick in the air.

The messenger was expectantly perplexed. His work had bought some time for the environment yet he knew that the king's word would ultimately decide its fate.

One early afternoon, he caught up to her. They walked in step, but he whistled around pretending he did not know her. She used the password “Taseko" to focus his attention and open the door to his memory. “Oh yes,” he said, “but I don't see anything in the king's character that would stop him from approving the mine.”

She could see why he would say this.

The king kept the sun locked in the golden chains under the carpet in his bedroom while people lived in perpetual darkness.

...

It was not long after their unsettling encounter that the big, plumpy, yelloworange sun rose in the sky.

All the people in the community came out and carried the big, plumpy, yelloworange sun in their arms.

The next day, it was announced that the king had died of gold dust overdose.

All the most beautiful birds of the world came to dip their wings in the puffy clouds on the lake's glistening surface. Rainbow trout made saltos wrapping themselves in the shiny threads of the sun rays before diving into the crystal blue waters.

Ninety thousand of them.

Water, Fish and the Sun brought Prosperity to the Community and everyone rejoiced in this rich economic base ever after.

Vampie

She glided on pink clouds.
She made heavenly tunes by plucking on the golden strings of the sun rays.
Moonlight shone in her eyes, and rivers' bubbling gurgle flowed through her ears.

She bounced off the moonlit reflections on the water, flew through the sparkly stardust in the darkness of the night, and snuggled face-to-face with her grandmother Moon. Not a night would go by without their hugs and kisses.

Vampie's favourite hideout was in the silent solitude of fragrant blueberry bushes. She discovered this quiet and abandoned place while wandering along a calm meandering river. The weeds and spider webs welcomed her gladly to their world and Vampie simply got lost in it. Blissfully rapt, she spent her time blueberry picking in the densely tangled forest of thin prickly branches. Auch-yum-yum-auch was the rhythm of the berry-picking melody coming from the Vampie's bushes - especially at night.

Shrill screams shot disturbance into the peaceful starry skies when thorns pierced her skin, startling sleepy animals and interrupting uniquely thespian hunting moments of the nocturnal ones.

The painful moments, though, were quite outnumbered by those filled with joyful smacking of her lips as she gorged on the ambrosial purplesweet juice of the blueberries. She packed handfuls of the delicious fruit into her mouth, undermining her lip seal, eliciting gag reflex and putting herself at risk of choking when the purplesweet juice hit her faucial arches and flooded her throat.

But she was an apt eater. The sound waves of smack, smack, mmmm, yum, yum echoed through the night.

Vampie learned best through play and had a bag of her favourite toys stuffed in a hole she had dug under the blueberry bushes. The bag held her paint brush, paint bottle, water color paper pad, and a mortar and pestle.

Vampie drank much of the purplesweet juice from the blueberries she crunched with her pointy little teeth in her mouth. But even more of it, she poured into her paint bottle. One way she turned blueberries into her favourite paint color purple, was by crushing them in the mortar with her pestle.

Another way she made her paint was by a very refined process of chewing the blueberries, separating the blueberry skin fiber from its juice with her tongue, then mixing the juice with her saliva before finally spitting the whole melange of a very special viscosity into her paint bottle.

Because she painted a lot, the crushing and chewing of blueberries into her favourite purple paint went on every night. The resonance of her indefatigable pounding through the night was a nuisance to many, yet somehow Vampie never noticed it. As effervescent energy sweated from her soul, it blended with the blueberry juice to create a magic potion purple paint, and with it many colorful realities.

Bathing in the light of her grandma's kind eye, she painted dreamy natural landscapes over the ones rendered gruesome by mining and burning. One of her preferred paint-over activities centered on the tar sands. When she kissed and hugged with her grandmother Moon high up in the skies, she could see down below the ghostly, scarred swaths of the land that not long ago used to be a home of pristine virgin forests, lakes and rivers.

With a gentle milky light on her face, the grandmother Moon whispered of her fears of the tar sands-disempowered way of life. Hearing grandma's quickened heartbeat in her soft whisper, a volcano of frenzied concern about the irreversible environmental destruction such as the tar sands gushed in Vampie's stomach. As if made of parchment, the edges of the dark, freezing universe caught on fire from her belching screams as she dove down to earth on a hypervelocity blue straggler star.

In less than a light year she found herself next to the blueberry bushes, exhausted and sleepy. After a nap, with cosmic energies revived and strong in her, she splashed the paint over the tar sands. With magical powers in her feet and hands, she worked the purple goo into the sea of rolling hills and valleys, thick with forests, lakes and venous webs of streams, rapids and waterfalls. She created a symphony infused with sounds of nature as a backdrop to her own singing, something she did all night long as she painted until sunrise.

At dawn, amid a silent procession of misty ghosts arising from the river, she bathed to wash away the signs of her nightly adventures. She put on her usual white shirt, a black tie, and a skirt. With a backpack on her shoulders, she flew to school.

It was a mystery to Vampie why the children in her classroom pointed at her face and laughed out loud and also quietly behind her back. Purple circles around her mouth, smeared up to her cheeks, her crimson teeth, the purple stains on the palms of her hands and the glittery stardust matted in her hair were the signature of a secret life she led at night.

Vampie too thought that she would rather be in her coffin than at school. Even though she was an A student, she found the quality of her school experience negative at best. It was based on a backward system of reward and punishment where people with an innovative outlook on life suffered the most. Knowing the feeling of the unconditional embrace of love from her grandmother, Vampie's sense of loss within the school confines was driving her out.

To heal herself from all the injury she sustained at school,she practiced magic. She felt like a blueberry bush and she wanted to be one. Just like the blueberry bush she wanted to be rooted in nature so that she too could enjoy unceasing caresses from the sun and the wind and drink the bursts of love showered in the rain from the skies.

Every time she went to school, she felt her roots being severed. She used her magic to heal the consequences of chopping up of her identity. She wanted to be rooted in who she was just like the blueberry bush – all the time.

One day at school, the cloudy haze of unhappiness over her head suddenly lifted. She saw some military representatives roaming the hallways and the playground full of school children whom they intended to recruit for war.

Military booths in the school hallways attracted poverty-stricken kids with promises of scholarships that would afford them university education.

Vampie, however, was hundred per cent positive that war killed people, scarred their bodies and spirits, and left them without proper compensation and care if they managed to return from the battlefield. She knew that such ruined, abandoned and dead people did not go to school. To her, this was one of the war secrets to spill on her peace placard. Her magic purple paint could never be handier.

She painted "Study War No More!" on a placard, and tied a purple ribbon in a loop on top. The next day, she proudly wore the placard around her neck as part of her school uniform, and faced the military recruiters in the school hallway.

Clad in peace, she stood calm and quiet. Her poise accentuated commotion of all the people who became flustered with her defiant presence. Some teachers and the school principal came out to defend the military recruiters from Vampie, the war resister. The school principal called the security guards who kicked Vampie out on the street after their initial persuasion to give up her peace had failed.

The school thought that they got rid of the troublemaker, but they were wrong.

Vampie took over the street in front of the school. She plastered it with multiples of placards she reproduced and also with banners she additionally painted with her messages of peace. She distributed flyers to all the passersby, alerting them to the ongoing militarization of public education as instantiated by her own school which participated in selling of their students into the war business.

Vampie's message resonated with the city folk who gathered to protest the school's lack of ethics concerning its partnership with war contractors.

Vigils, protests, independent multimedia work, and an official complaint filed with the Securities Commission by the people whose hearts were brimming with tireless devotion to peace, led to an impartial investigation into the military partnership the school was involved in.

It turned out that the parents of the children attending the school were never informed about the visits of the military recruiters, that the whole thing was the principal's affair with his friends in the military, and that he was receiving the kickbacks in return for allowing the military recruiters access to students in his school.

With a sense of personal responsibility in action and some initiative, justice prevailed in the end, giving Vampie a chance to return to her abandon where she continued spinning endless webs of gentle joy.

Tree Feathers

There was so much exuberance of bird song in February this year.

Prematurely, the springsummer heat sneaked in the bushes, and crazy it all has become ever since.

Cherry blossoms popped their perky pink heads out of the confused tree buds-- in February.

Birds were delighted. They mistook the freak weather change for the mating season. In no time, the winter silence donned the soundscape cloak of a tropical forest -- in February.

It was the bird's fault that all the logical explanations and warnings about the sudden weather change were drowned out. The birds were too busy to listen. It was that time of the year, they naively thought, when the twigs are collected and woven into the newly wed family nests.

Cherry blossoms became larger by the day, padding the tree branches with their heavy pink clusters, and bending the tree crowns down to earth.

February was a pleasant surprise. April -- not so much!

All those who revelled in the February heat, were stung by the cold whirlwinds in April. The cold winds tore the cherry blossoms off the tree branches and whipped them up in the air. Like snowflakes, the sea of pink petals glided down from the skies.

The air became pink. The grass became pink. Ravens' feet became pink. The whole earth looked pink. People had to carry umbrellas and their umbrellas became pink. Little girls and boys loved the pink snow and threw it up in the air and at each other.

But, it was the birds who did not share in the fun any more. As the tree branches became bare naked and the birds' nests exposed and unprotected in the April's cold winds, the parent birds started to panic.

They flew up and down collecting the pink petals from the ground and pasted them on the outer walls of their nests. Soon, their homes started to look like little pink igloos. The pink petals served well as the insulation from the cold temperatures, but this was not enough to keep the little chicks warm.

The little chicks inside the pink igloo nests were freezing because they did not have large warm feathers to protect them. It was also time for them to go out and practice flying, but the heavy cold winds just would not allow it.

Worried about their little chicks, the parent birds came up with an idea! "Why don't we temporarily give our babies the tree feathers!" they exclaimed. And so the parent birds did. They created the fragrant flowery blankets of petals, and rolled up their little chicks in them.

The little chicks became pink. They were not cold any more, and could fly in the cold winter winds in April.

When all the pink chicks from the community came out for a flight, the face of the angry skies turned -- pink!

our community garden

My name is Pepper.









I live in a community garden with my brothers and sisters tomatoes, carrots, potatoes and a lot of medicinal herbs.

We used to be a happy community. We fed our neighbours who came around to visit us.

The garden door was always wide open to what was one of the most local, environment-loving, soil-fresh succulent soul-food experiences.

We fed people, but not only their stomachs.

The purest of joys filled people's hearts when they ate the food they picked in their local community gardens.

The plant-people community breathed in the same smell of earth, basked in the same golden sunshine and enjoyed splashing in the same puddles during the rainy day outings.

The plants in the local community gardens lived in peace and freedom, and so the peace and freedom
was part and parcel of the local food people ate. Just by eating the plants which were peaceful and free, the locals could taste peace. They could taste freedom.

Some friendly worms and a bit of the local compost made the soil rich. Eating the food from the local gardens was nutrient rich. When the garden was in full glow, it was not about how much food one could eat, but how much nutrients one could get from the very few plants one ate.
One plot of local community plants could last through a couple of seasons. The veggies were so nutrient-rich that people did not need to eat many of them to get full.

In peace energy and nutrient richness, healthy, the kids grew.


But, one day, something terrible happened.

The garden plants got imprisoned. Their people friends got shut out. Up in the trees, the birds and squirrels got visibly upset. The bees stopped buzzing. The black cats perched on the fence in total suspense, and could not chase the garden mice in the nights of the full moon any more. The worms got sick with worry and stopped fertilizing the soil.

A sense of revolt at the privatization of the local public gardens was thick in the air.

The plants were not allowed to feed the people locally any more. They were either trucked out of their community, or worse, they were not picked at all, so that their vibrant peace energies dried out.

The proprietary mindset gripped the public gardening spirit. It was forgotten that the first philosophical principle of public gardening is communal welcome, sharing and open access.

Instead, nameplates appeared in the public gardens, linking each plot to an individual's posession. On the one hand, the nameplates made the plots in the public gardens look like business offices. On the other hand, it all became reminiscen of a graveyard.

Memberships had to be paid to gain access. And those who imposed the membership fees and paid for them, could also pay for the meals in the restaurants. Pointlessly, the plants rustled in the wind, never to be desired by their owners.

The culture of freedom and peace of the local public gardens was yoked. The community plants withered in plain sight of people who were starving.

So, the plants in the public gardens became private property and their owners became ever vigilant persecutors of those who, sometimes, out of sheer need, crossed the barricades to pick their local food.


From glowing spaces of plant-people communion, the public gardens became a cause of unrest, fear, withering and starvation. Child poverty grew, and became worst in the country. Such was the shade of green used to paint the faux eco-masks in the community.

Letter to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty